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Blast from the Past: Watch a SpaceX Rocket Launch in Florida

On a trip to Cape Canaveral, a writer introduces his son to the thrill of the new space age. Plus: A spectacle-seeker’s guide to upcoming launches

By

Matthew Kronsberg

Oct. 4, 2017 10:05 a.m. ET

This fall, SpaceX’s long-awaited, much-delayed Falcon Heavy rocket, designed to carry humans to the Moon or Mars, should finally make its debut on fabled launchpad 39A at Florida’s John F. Kennedy Space Center, off Cape Canaveral. If all goes to plan, this first, unmanned flight of the most powerful rocket to take off from Canaveral since the Apollo-era Saturn V flights in the 1970s will energize the Space Coast in ways unseen in decades.

And if it doesn’t go to plan? That could be just as exciting, suggested Elon Musk, SpaceX’s...